Hidden in the Heart (19 page)

Lydia’s health was toasted and she received gifts from everyone, for which she thanked them most sincerely and promised to open them the next morning. The food was excellent, for Mr Savidge always prided himself on the quality of the fare offered at his establishment.

Only when the party was about to disperse was Lydia finally able to snatch a few precious moments alone with John. Thomas Savidge had made his own carriage ready to convey them to their home, but Lydia protested that it was such a short distance that there was no need. She would much prefer to walk.

‘Walk, my dear Miss Bramwell!’ Mr Savidge expostulated, appalled at such a suggestion. ‘Never let it be said that Thomas Savidge behaved in so shabby a fashion toward his guests.’

Part of the reason for his insistence was his burning desire to show off to all his acquaintance his latest acquisition: a smart new landau which he lost no time in having his coachman bring round for their delectation. Like a child with a new toy, he must be pointing out every detail of its manifold charms - from the folding roof, which he kept down tonight to enjoy the balmy air, to special lanterns which proclaimed its presence even on the darkest night.

‘I must admit,’ Mr Bramwell said, eyeing this impressive conveyance with approval, ‘that I am quite fagged to death, and look forward to a short carriage ride. But for young people, no doubt an evening walk is far more pleasant.’

‘If you will permit me, sir,’ John said, taking Lydia’s arm, ‘I would be pleased to escort Miss Bramwell home. We shall not be very many minutes, I assure you.’

‘Do you think it is wise?’ Aunt Camilla asked, uncertain whether this exceeded the bounds of strict propriety. Besides, with a murderer loose among them, who could tell what might happen?

‘My dear sister,’ Mr Bramwell told her, ‘when an engaged couple cannot take a stroll in the moonlight, on the village high street, things have come to a pretty pass in this country!’

So it was settled. While their elders enjoyed the comforts of their host’s carriage, John and Lydia began to walk towards the cottage. It was only a few minutes after ten o’clock. The air was cool, but not unpleasantly so: just enough, in fact, to make walking a pleasant exercise rather than a chore.

The young couple watched the carriage bump along the road and out of sight before they ventured to speak to each other.

‘John,’ Lydia ventured at last, ‘do you think that we should continue with this?’

‘With what?’ he asked, perhaps pardonably perplexed.

‘Our engagement, I mean.’

‘Do you intend to jilt me?’ he queried, placid as always.

‘No, no,’ she said hurriedly. ‘But do you think that we are doing the right thing?’

‘Perhaps I should ask you why you seem to think that we are not?’

There was a brief pause while Lydia drew closer and pulled the skirt of her gown towards her in order to avoid being caught in the branch of a low bush which protruded onto the pavement beside them. When she at last spoke, the words came out in a rush, as if she had been holding them in with her breath and must release them all at once.

‘It’s just that I do not think that we are in love with each other, John: at least, not in the way that my aunt and Monsieur d’Almain are.’

‘But we are not your aunt and d’Almain,’ he pointed out. ‘Our natures are not the same, and neither are our feelings.’

‘Tell me honestly, John,’ she begged. ‘Do you think of nothing else but me, day and night?’

‘Of course not!’ he objected strongly. ‘You are often in my thoughts, to be sure, but I have many things to think about, particularly just now. What with saving d’Almain and trying to keep my father in check....’

‘Just so.’ But she was not finished with him yet. ‘If we marry,’ she continued with determination, ‘and I were to perish in childbirth or something, would you put a bullet through your brains?’

‘Certainly not.’ He stopped and looked down at her with a frown. ‘What has put all this nonsense into your head?’

‘It is merely that all the heroes in romantic novels do such things. Their love is everything in the world to them. Nothing else matters.’

John snorted contemptuously. ‘That is all very well in books,’ he informed her, ‘but life is quite different. One would have to be decidedly touched in the upper works to do anything so silly.’

‘And if I were to die ...’ she continued doggedly.

‘Whyever should you?’ he demanded. ‘You are young and perfectly healthy.’

‘Yes, but if I should, would you marry again?’

‘Very likely,’ he said. ‘Particularly if we had children, and if I were not so old as to be content with no more than a lapdog for company.’

‘Do you think,’ she persevered, coming to the heart of the matter, ‘that there is only one person - one love - for each person on earth?’

‘Most unlikely, I should say,’ he stated flatly. ‘Frankly, I would have thought you would have more sense than this, Lydia.’

‘Oh, I do!’ she cried. ‘I was merely wondering if you might not.’

Having resumed their perambulation, they were now within sight of Aunt Camilla’s cottage. However, John stopped her once more, and turned her about to face him.

‘Look here, Lydia,’ he said. ‘I have every intention - and indeed every desire - to marry you. But if you do not wish to marry me, I will not force you to do so.’

‘Of course I wish to marry you, John!’ she cried, feeling as if a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

‘Then we may consider the matter as settled.’

They walked on several more paces, and were at the front of the cottage before Lydia wondered aloud, ‘Do you think that Aunt Camilla and Monsieur d’Almain will find happiness together?’

‘I think,’ John said, after considering the question for several moments, ‘that neither one of them is ever truly happy unless they are unhappy.’

‘They are perfectly matched, then,’ she said cheerfully.

‘Unquestionably.’

John bent his head and gave her a most encouraging kiss. She heard no angels singing, nor did her heart leap like the fallow deer, but it was most enjoyable and she was rather annoyed when it ended.

‘We must,’ he told her, with a complete change of subject, ‘see what we can do about clearing d’Almain of this crime.’

‘It is absolutely imperative,’ she agreed.

‘I will return tomorrow to see your father off.’ John escorted her the last few paces to the front door. ‘We will make our plans then.’

Lydia was more than pleased with the gifts which she received on her birthday. Papa had purchased a richly plumed bonnet which he assured her was all the crack in town. Aunt Camilla presented her with delicately embroidered handkerchiefs - an absolute necessity for young ladies. John’s gift was an unusual cross suspended on a slender golden chain. It was, he explained, carved from a kind of jade found not in the Orient but from the equally distant shores of South America. It was not merely lovely to behold, but had the added attraction of the exotic.

Under other circumstances, it might well have been a perfect birthday. However, there was still the danger facing Monsieur d’Almain, which oppressed her aunt’s spirits so dreadfully and was a constant thorn in Lydia’s own side since she could not at present see any way to clear his name. In addition, Mr Bramwell’s departure took away a significant source of happiness and some measure of hope. She had convinced herself that her father would be able to assist her in her efforts to find the truth about the recent crimes in Diddlington, but he had no answer to the riddles which still perplexed her.

‘Can you not stay one more day?’ she begged, clutching his coat sleeve even while the hired conveyance waited outside in the high street.

‘I’m afraid that it is impossible, my dear.’ Mr Bramwell sighed, and it was clear that he quit them with no enthusiasm. He smiled warmly at her, and then turned his gaze upon John. ‘But I know that I leave you in good hands here, and I am certain that your French friend will have cause to thank you at last.’

‘I hope that I shall be seeing you again soon, sir,’ his future son-in-law said, shaking his hand.

‘I shall doubtless be permitted to return to you once my eldest child has managed to capture her titled gudgeon.’

‘Pray, give mama and Louisa my love!’ Lydia cried, belatedly remembering her duty. ‘I trust that I shall soon be hearing glad tidings from my sister.’

‘You may hear that she is to be married,’ papa answered drily. ‘Whether such tidings are glad or gloomy, it is not for me to say.’

Lydia laughed. ‘At least Louisa will achieve her ambition to wed a title.’

‘And an ancient title it is too,’ Mr Bramwell said with a wicked reference to the gentleman’s advanced years. ‘Not the handsome young buck she once imagined, I fear.’

‘A baronet,’ John reminded him, ‘is still a baronet at any age.’

‘True,’ Mr Bramwell admitted. ‘And she would certainly be foolish to refuse him, should he offer his heart and hand.’

‘Never mind,’ Lydia added, ‘that the hand of a man of sixty is not so strong or so smooth as a man of twenty.’

‘If his flesh be withered, it is no great matter - so long as his pockets are plump!’

Lydia turned to John, expecting him to join in their inappropriate merriment, but was surprised to see a look of utter amazement upon his usually smiling countenance. He was not smiling now, but looked from father to daughter as if he beheld them anew.

‘I must be going,’ Mr Bramwell announced, having put off the evil moment for as long as possible.

‘Goodbye, Papa.’

Amid the bustle naturally attending any departure, Lydia momentarily forgot the strange reaction of her fiancé, and was busy in hugging her father and dabbing a spot of moisture from her cheek with Aunt Camilla’s gift. Only when the carriage had disappeared around the corner did her attention return to John. The startled look was gone, she was glad to see, but its substitute was equally interesting. John now looked more grave than she had ever seen him.

‘What is it, John?’ she could not help but ask him.

‘Lydia,’ he intoned with the solemnity of a priest administering the last rites, ‘we must speak.’

This had a most inauspicious ring to it, but she nodded quietly and led him back into the house. They had been standing on the grass verge beside the street, but now made their way back into her aunt’s house. Camilla herself had already fled indoors, overcome as always by the strain of parting from anyone for whom she felt even the mildest affection.

‘Tell me again,’ John insisted as soon as they had seated themselves in the parlor, ‘just what Kate said to you that day at Bellefleur.’

‘I am sure I have told you more than once,’ she replied, not annoyed but curious as to why he should desire to hear it again.

‘Bear with me a moment,’ he pleaded.

She began to recount their conversation, as far as her memory served, and he interrupted her again, to ask what were her very last words.

‘She said, “It wasn’t his hands, miss”,’ Lydia answered confidently.

‘How did she say the words?’

‘As though she were surprised about something.’

‘No, no,’ he almost growled in his intensity. ‘How did she say them? Did she say, “It wasn’t his
hands
, miss?” Or did she say, “It wasn’t
his
hands, miss?” ‘

‘Does it matter?’ Lydia was mystified.

John ignored the question, asking instead, ‘Of whom was she speaking?’

‘I really cannot be sure.’

‘Think, Lydia!’ he cried. ‘Had she not been telling you something just before that?’

Lydia closed her eyes, summoning to mind all that had happened that day at Bellefleur. The little maid had been eager to tell her anything that she knew, although it had not seemed to be much at the time.

‘She had been telling me how she went into Sir Hector’s room one day, quite unexpectedly, when she heard something fall.’

‘And what happened when she went in?’

‘The room was very dark, being lit by just one candle.’ Lydia compressed her lips in an effort of concentration. ‘Sir Hector reached over and snuffed out the candle at once, and flung some very - colorful - words at her.’

John shot up out of his chair, slapping his hand against his forehead. He began to pace about the room like one distracted, while Lydia stared up at him in a kind of wonder.

‘My God!’ he cried. ‘What a fool I’ve been.’

‘Whatever is the matter, John?’

John halted in his stride, standing directly over her and looking down at her with a strange mixture of triumph and sadness.

‘I know who killed her, Lydia,’ he said with quiet confidence.

* * * *

For a few seconds Lydia was quite deprived of speech. Her mouth indeed opened, but no sound emerged from her parted lips. She did not doubt John, but it was such a sudden and unexpected development.

‘How can you know?’ she demanded when she at last recovered herself.

‘Do you not see?’ He grasped her two hands in his and pulled her up to face him. ‘It was the hands.’

‘The hands?’ Lydia was more puzzled than ever.

‘Yes. I am a simpleton not to have seen it before.’ He squeezed her hands painfully in his own large fingers, before continuing more slowly, ‘When Kate entered that room, she saw a hand reach across to the candle. She saw it for only a moment before the room was plunged into complete darkness. It was not until she spoke to you that day that she realized the hand she saw did not belong to Sir Hector. It wasn’t
his
hand!’

Lydia stared at him, allowing his words to slowly but strongly pry open the door of her mind. She understood something of what he was saying, but still did not grasp the entire meaning.

‘You do not mean to say,’ she gasped out, ‘that Sir Hector had a woman in his bed! At his age!’

To her consternation, John flung back his head and burst into a peal of laughter. Indeed, he was so full of mirth that he quite forgot his manners, dropping back into his chair, so convulsed that he was even forced to wipe a tear or two from his eyes.

‘I do not find it at all amusing,’ she scolded him, not at all inclined to share his emotions.